Xiaomi sells 40,000 Redmi 1S units in India in 4.2 seconds

Here we go again. Xiaomi has continued its tradition of holding flash sales in India on Tuesdays. This time, though, it wasn't the Mi 3 on offer - rather, the much more affordable Redmi 1S. 40,000 units were sold in just 4.2 seconds.

The smartphone was offered for just INR 5,999, which is around $98 at the current exchange rates and is even a bit cheaper than what the same handset goes for in China.

Understandably then, interest was extremely high. More than 250,000 people registered for the sale (that's a prerequisite, you can't buy otherwise). So even if this batch of phones was double what the biggest batch of Mi 3 units sold in India was, there still are a lot of people who wanted to get a Redmi 1S, but simply weren't able to.

The registration procedure for the next Redmi 1S sale has already started in India, and as usual things are handled by Flipkart, the country's biggest online store.

By now it's extremely clear that Xiaomi grossly underestimated the demand its wares would face in India. And because the company plans its production months in advance, it will take a while before there are enough Xiaomi devices to go around over there. That is, if the Chinese smartphone maker even wants to fully match the demand - one could say that this constant lack of supply is helping build buzz around its products.